Resilience is a current and popular term in health care, particularly with regard to young children who are developmentally at risk. It is the ability to "bounce back" from stressful life events so it applies to all of us. We have all experienced stressful events as part of living; they can be very serious or simply result in a "bad day." Our responses can range from disappointment to devastation. We are then challenged to engage in the process of recovery from the disruption of these experiences.

Our resilience is enhaced by "protective" factors that decrease the negative effect of stressful experiences so that we continue to grow and enjoy life. They include our personal styles and beliefs as well as the support we can access through our contact with other people including partners, friends and family. When the stress of life events exceeds our protective factors, we become overwhelmed. Our loss of resilience is manifested by ineffectual and unhealthy patterns of coping with stress that can become fixed and further hamper our ability to bounce back.

Jack Rosenberg and Beverley Kitaen-Morse (The Intimate Couple)  offer an insightful observation that can be interpreted as a metaphor for resilience. They watched young windsurfers in Hawaii attack huge waves without ever seeming to fall down. Watching more closely, they saw that the windsurfers did indeed fall but picked themselves back up with quick and graceful movements. It was clear that the windsurfers were not afraid of falling. They knew that it is impossible to stay up all of the time when riding the waves and that falling is part of the ride. They had discovered the secret of windsurfing - - it is not how to stay up but how to get back up after falling.

Humpty Dumpty tried to stay up on a wall. We don't know what stressful event pushed him over the edge. He was clearly unprepared to have a great fall and consequently, was shattered by the experience. External protective factors supplied by the King were of no avail. Humpty Dumpty was done in by his own belief that falling was unacceptable. As a result, he landed very hard and may have thought himself undeserving of any help to be put back together again.

Mary and I led a program recently where a participant had a Humpty Dumpty experience. She had made significant shifts in her personal growth in recent months and was feeling really "up." Unfortunately, being "up" in personal development programs is a precarious perch because of the difficult issues that inevitably arise in experiential learning. She was quickly in distress. This was followed by despair at having fallen from her previous state of well-being and by the disbelief that she could not get back up. She retreated into isolation and erased all of her protective factors. After re-focusing on her strong personal qualities and the support of her family, she was able to experience resilience by putting herself back together again.

That person will probably be able to get back up more quickly the next time she falls. As Mary Pipher (The Shelter of Each other)  states, resilience increases with each challenge successfully met. It seems important to note here that despite the gracefulness of the windsurfers, falling down and getting up is not always a pretty sight. This may make the process even more distasteful for many of us. The strength and learning necessary to get back up comes from getting back up again and again, and maybe then, with grace.